There seems to be some serious demand for books geared towards young adults and archery. So to have a least one archer in the story will certianly not hurt.

So True the Arrow, So Steady the Hand

No word in your quiver goes errant, no thought from your bow is misspent, no image falls short of your target, so true are the arrows thus sent. Your heart with a steady compunction pulls the bowstrings few others could ply, your story does more than just function-- your steady hand helps my heart fly!

As I was driving to Mathis to a reception (it was a 45 minute drive...so left me lots of time to think)

Even though I'd like to see who else wants to join...in the mean time...I feel we can get started:

I would think the first thing we need to do is email Jonathan and Ted...and ask them if we can get permission to use any of the posts...and I'm still wondering if we need to email Elbren also. Only because the Mithril Knights were basically her idea...even though we're going to create our own world and stories...we do possibly plan on using come of the ideas from the posts...

Wasn't sure where to put this...I can't link it...but it's a really good article from 'The Writer's magazine. I'll just post it here. It's about writing the movements and the gesture we make in word form and other good info...excellent article!
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By Thomas Kaufman

Published: June 15, 2011

Use Movement and gesture in your fiction...

I have spent more than 20 years behind the lens of a camera, framing the way people move in hundreds of films (and in the process, taking home an Emmy and two Gordon Parks awards for cinematography). Maybe that’s why I think movement and gesture are important in writing, because they tell us visually what is happening internally.

I’ve tried to apply that cameraman’s eye to my budding writing career, which began with my 2010 novel Drink the Tea, which won the Private Eye Writers of America’s Best First Private Eye Novel competition, and a starred review from Publishers Weekly. I suspect most people like Willis Gidney, my private eye, who also appears in my second novel, Steal the Show, due out this month.

When I write a scene for a novel, I try to see it, to visualize the important details. Where are the people at the start? How about at the end? What changed?

You can learn a lot watching how characters move in well-directed films. In the opening scene of Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels, Sullivan explains his new project to his bosses. They hate it. The scene is all one take, and the way the actors move in the scene is motivated by their feelings and reactions to one another. The staging is poetry.

Alfred Hitchcock had a great sense of staging and movement. In fact, he deliberately confined his shooting space in films like Rear Window and Dial M for Murder—for him the films were exercises in staging and camerawork. Any fiction writer can learn a lot by watching them.

A person doesn’t always have to be in motion to give a sense of his or her interior space, of what they’re feeling. The French Impressionists were students of gesture. It’s important, because they found a visual way of telling about complex relationships. Take Renoir’s painting Luncheon of the Boating Party (above), in which the viewer can observe three different love triangles, all told through body language.

An eye for detailMy wife is an artist, and one of the perks is going to see great painting and sculpture with her. Since I work as a director of photography, we always have a lot to talk about. It’s also nice we work in different disciplines—we nearly always inform each other while we’re learning.

Just like a film director working with actors, I want, as a novelist, to work with my characters, explore their motivations, give them useful gestures or habits that inform the reader of their mental states. I’m having a bad day if I have a character shout, “I’m really angry at your infidelity right now!” But what if the same character picks up a cherished wedding present—a china vase—and smashes it without a word? Which behavior is more powerful for the reader?

Sometimes, very small actions can be revealing. I read that Rock Hudson had worn a groove down the middle of his thumbnail. A nervous habit, but why? The writer suggested that Hudson was conflicted, a gay man masquerading as straight in Hollywood. It must have been very stressful for Hudson, and it could explain the thumbnail.

That’s a splendid detail, because of its meaning. In fact, I use something like that in Steal the Show.

Add to your ‘warehouse’Part of good writing is not just details, but the telling details. The ones with meaning. I can write five pages about a guy lighting a cigarette. I can describe the color of a door, the shape of a cloud, the vibration of a rolling bus. These are potentially meaningless details. I say potentially, because you, as the writer, can imbue them with meaning.

So what are the telling details? That’s what I try to visualize when writing a scene. Earlier, I described a person destroying a china vase. I may write a scene, put the vase in, then go to an earlier point of the manuscript and place the vase there, too, so the reader knows how important it is before it gets smashed. Writing is a kind of magic, isn’t it?

Sometimes, when I’m on the road filming a television show or commercial, I’ll see or hear something that I want to write down. I don’t know how I’ll use this scene, or that scrap of information, or a gesture or attitude someone showed. But writing it down makes it a part of my warehouse, the stuff I use when I write. I’ve heard expressions like, “You’ve got a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much obliged.” You can bet I wrote that down. One time someone I interviewed said he was involved in a project but not committed to it. I asked him, what’s the difference? “In a bacon and egg breakfast,” he said, “the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.” That made it into my notebook, and into Drink the Tea.

Years ago I went to a Mexican restaurant with two friends, one a successful young Mexican-American woman. She was not only the first in her family to complete high school, but the first to graduate college with a business degree. She was going places. So why was she so rude to an inoffensive Mexican-American waitress that she made her cry?

I thought about it, and decided the waitress was an unpleasant reminder of her own humble roots that she was anxious to cover. Maybe I was right, maybe not. What matters is, the incident made me think. What would make people be so rude to someone who’d done them no harm? When a character does something, he or she is trying to restore a balance to what is seen as an imbalance. The young woman who made the waitress cry had experienced something negative, and she was attempting to make her own world a positive place again.

I could be all wrong. Maybe the young woman stubbed her toe and that’s why she was so brusque. Maybe, but then I have no story, no jumping-off point. I later used this incident as an important clue for the readers of Drink the Tea.

So why did she do it? In my mind, she had a good reason. Maybe not one I’d think was sufficient for her to act this badly, but that’s not the point. It’s enough for her, that’s the point. And if the reader can understand it, they’ll go along.

Understanding charactersI think understanding is the key to good characters, especially villains. I don’t see my bad guys as bad guys. No, just as Lee Marvin saw his characters, the bad guys are really just ordinary guys doing what they have to do to make it to the end of the day.

Macbeth is an example. Here we have a man so obsessed with power that he is willing to kill, lie, risk losing his sanity. Of course, Shakespeare lets us in on every important aspect of Macbeth’s thoughts, what brings him to these points. It is exactly because we can track Macbeth’s obsession that the play is so powerful. If Macbeth acts seemingly without reason, what we watch may be interesting, for a while. Eventually, we’ll get bored. So he kills Banquo. So what?

By having his protagonist be a murdering obsessive, Shakespeare flips our notions of good vs. bad. Macbeth has murdered. Once he’s caught, the show’s over. So Shakespeare must sustain the conflict. The forces of law and order are, for Macbeth, the forces of antagonism. Who’s the bad guy in Macbeth?

In Billy Wilder’s film Double Indemnity, the two main characters, a man and a woman, fall in love and conspire to kill the woman’s husband for the insurance money. The lead insurance investigator—who is also the protagonists’ best friend—becomes an antagonist in this scenario. In one scene, the man and woman believe they’ve committed a near-perfect murder, and have only to escape. They run to their car, get in, and start the engine.

But the engine won’t start. In silence they look at each other, and for the audience it sinks in. Get out of there, we want to shout, get the hell out.

I met Billy Wilder in 1980 and had a chance to ask him how he got the audience to identify so closely with these protagonists. His answer was that the script goes to a lot of trouble to make it clear to the audience why the insurance man is committing murder.

In other words, if you can understand what motivates a person, and it makes sense to that fictional character, then it’ll make sense to the reader.

I guess the point is to write characters interesting enough that readers want to hang out with them. Do that and you can do almost anything.

In addition to being an Emmy Award-winning cameraman and director, Thomas Kaufman is a writer whose debut novel, Drink the Tea, won the Private Eye Writers of America Best First Private Eye Novel award. He has contributed to three Academy Award-nominated films and shot hundreds of documentary and commercial films. Web: thomaskaufman.com.

While I was at work...waiting for them to bring an inmate in hand cuffs for me to drink...err...draw their blood...I noticed a book on the library cart that they take around for inmates. A lone book was sitting there...so I...naturally....HAD...to see what this book was all about....and let me tell you....what I saw...caused my heart to do a couple of flips

The title of the book was: Color of Chaos...it is written by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

I was looking at ALL the MAPS he had created for his world...and wow...was I impressed

Ah yes....I remember that author. He wrote quite a few books and he certainly had a richly imagined "world".... Not bad books....perfectly acceptable...wouldn't set the world in fire but that is no flaw or crime. Rats....I don't mean to damn through faint praise.

He uses well established fantasy devices, which well trained readers recognise and respond to. It's well written enough to draw you on, the characters were interesting enough to incline me to read a few of his works to see what happened. Not dull, good language, interesting enough. Not overly complex, but not overly memorable for me. I can't for the life of me remember a character name...

Great to read when you don't want your brain to perform contortions but don't want to poison it with dross. There is a lot to be said for that.

In fact...this weeks question (well...the last two weeks) is Who are your favorite writers?

What caught my eye on the Color of Chaos book was the maps...all those names...and countries....I was jut taken by what I was seeing. That's the kind of world I would like Hue, Tempest, Rho and I to come up with...and who ever else wants to join us

It was just exciting to see another writer coming up with such a complex world...along with others too, like the Thieves World. It gets me motivated and encouraged

Outside of the speculative fiction genre (the generic term for sci fi and fantasy), I am a MASSIVE FAN of Salman Rushdie. This man is a master of the novel as an art. A superlative storyteller, a modern day bard. Adore his work and the fact I can revel in it's characters and symmetry of perfect plot arcs and construction with joyous abandon.

Aside from Rushdie, Peter Carey, Lionel Shriver and even fallen British writer Jeffrey Archer (his short stories are crackers) all are regular denizens on my bookshelf. If I love a writer, I will buy their work in hard copy and, what is more, keep it and re-read it. I am the sort of reader who devours a book in two hours or so, and usually once read will not return to it. A bookshelf position is a sign of how much I loved their work.

My favourite writer of all time is, predictably, William Shakespeare. I have always been an acolyte of myths, fables, stories. I adore the way they can place a lens over real people and real events and help us see deeper into ourselves. I am a fiction groupie through and through.

If I read non-fiction, I am usually reading for professional purposes. That takes me into the realms of governance, psychology and the neurosciences. i am insatiable on the topic of evolutionary psychology...fascinates me...and I adore clinical studies of unusual psychological phenomena...But you don't want me to list my favourite researchers because that, I am delighted to say, would see me posting for years on the matter.

Personally, I think that the best way to write something is to write it. In the very early days of RP here, Some one would start a thread with a paragraph or two. The next person would simply pick up from there and go on. That's a lot like how it works now but I remember when there were no OOC or Aside threads, there was very little backstage discusion between the poster authors you just jumped in and wrote for all you were worth and rolled with the twists and turns the story took as the others posted. Everyone had the idea to write the same story but no one really knew where that was gonna go after the we left the starting gate.

I propose that those of us who are going to be a part of this project try doing just as we used to do, just write it. We can, will and should have discussions about this but I think that if we get started we can work out a lot of things that way instead of discussing the thing to death befor we get down to it. Just my three cents.

So this is as good a start as any, vague enough to entertain any ideas going forward.

There was little hope in the message even as it was sent out. There was even less hope that the tiny bits of paper lashed to the legs of a fleet of carrier birds would reach those who once defended the land. There was almost no hope at all that they would answer the call, or if anyone was left to hear it.

I got nothing. I don't have any idea what I'm talking about or where this is going. The only way I know how to write, is to write. I will start with whatever comes into my head and write it down. Tonight I was thinking about birds, I dunno why but there it is. I got no story but I did mention carrier birds in the previous post so that was a nice carry on that can move the story forward.

I got an idea that each character can come into this story by having one of the birds reach them one way or another. they cour reacte however they want to the message which can say what ever they want, it is all open/

I'm rambling but my idea is that as each person enters they come from where they come from and these differences anc help define the geography or cultursl variations in this world we are creating. For now each one getting a message is the way in and the bird and the mysteryous message is the connecting link.

A story could proceed to some degree with just this, developing out of the air so to speak. Now sooner or later something of a plot direction must be undertaken but for now we already know all there is to know about the story, whih is nothing at all yet. There can be a beauty in simply plugging away until a story starts to take shape. Prayer and vodka are also a big help here

I like your idea of each character defining their geography and culture areas of where their from and or where their at the time of writing...

I'm so glad you haven't given up on this Hue...thank-you for hanging in there

I'll read tomorrow...I've only had a few hours of sleep from last night and had to go in to work at 1AM...need some sleep...have to be up at 12 midnight and to work at 1 again...but then I'll be off until Monday after tomorrow

Saturday...my newest Grand daughter will be born...her name will be Lucy!

Parador~J wrote: I admire you and Parm for your writing abilities and skills...and above all...talents! You two are amazing...and two of my more favorite people on TORC...

My time spent here at TORC did much to help my skills over the years.I have been helped by good mentors, and I have been equally inspiredby seeming inexhaustible youthful enthusiasm. TORC brings such a varietyof people to its realm!

I am glad for the time to hone skills, try new things, and enjoy friendswho have grown very dear from over a decade!